U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Sunday that the United States was trying to stay in a landmark nuclear deal clinched between Iran and six world powers to curb Tehran's nuclear program.
"We're going to stay in," said Tillerson in an interview with CNN. "We're going to work with our European partners and allies to see if we can't address these concerns."
In his latest attempt to fulfill another campaign promise, U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday dealt a blow to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated during the Obama administration without scrapping it.
"I am announcing today that we cannot and will not make this certification (of Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal)," Trump said at the White House as he unveiled a new Iran strategy of his administration.
The decertification would not pull the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal at the moment, but it would open a 60-day window in which U.S. Congress could reimpose nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, a step which would mean the violation of the deal on the U.S. side.
During his Friday speech, Trump called the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), "one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into," and blamed Tehran for committing "multiple violations of the agreement" and "not living up to the spirit of the deal."
His accusation of Iran's violation of the agreement appeared to contradict remarks by Tillerson, who had said earlier that under the JCPOA, the United States did not dispute that Iran was "under technical compliance."
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN watchdog tasked with monitoring Iran's nuclear activities, had in the past certified eight times Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal.
In his CNN interview on Sunday, Tillerson claimed that Iran had committed technical violations of the nuclear deal but remedied its violations.
"They have remedied the violations, which then brings them back into technical compliance," said Tillerson.
Despite his criticism of Iran and the Iran nuclear deal, Trump on Friday stopped short of abandoning the nuclear deal.
Instead, he said he was directing his administration to work with Congress and U.S. allies to address "the deal's many serious flaws," including "insufficient enforcement and near-total silence on Iran's missile programs."
The nuclear deal was reached between Iran and six countries including Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany in July 2015. So far, the deal had helped defuse the Iran nuclear crisis and bolstered the international non-proliferation regime.
Trump had long criticized the Iran nuclear pact. In his speech delivered at this year's UN General Assembly last month, Trump called the agreement "an embarrassment" for the United States.
According to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act passed by U.S. Congress in 2015, the Trump administration is required every 90 days to recertify to Congress Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal.
